


Probably a Bad Idea

by ArtisanMushrooms



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Crushes, Established Relationship, Exchange students, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, I love all of these characters way too much, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, That will become apparent through this fic, transfer students
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 11:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15533571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtisanMushrooms/pseuds/ArtisanMushrooms
Summary: Imagine that all of your favorite Marvel characters were thrown into the teenage cesspool that is high school. Your first thought would probably be: chaos.Well, you’re more or less correct.Central Manhattan High School is full of interesting people: beautiful jocks, genius nerds, and shady weirdos. Factor in school rivalries, crushes, senior pranks, suspensions, prom, parties, and a lot of new transfer students and it gets wild.!!Ships and characters will be added to the tags as they enter in different chapters! There will be a lot more than there are at the moment! I plan on focusing on more than one character!!Rated Teen for cursing and suggestive themes





	Probably a Bad Idea

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written these characters a lot, so some of them might feel a little off, that’s all on me. I’m doing my best dudes.  
> Please enjoy!

Another Christmas, another New Year, and another two week long escapade to the snowy mountains with his distant relatives and full immersion in the ski lodge lifestyle. The lodge had everything: swimming pools, night parties, bars, hot tubs, sight-seeing, anything you could wish for at a resort, but Tony had stayed inside for the majority of the trip, only making occasional use of the lodge’s crappy internet and cell service to connect to the outside world and with his weird friends from high school who would constantly clog up their group chat with stupid memes. Tony couldn’t remember when he stopped responding. Or checking.

All-in-all, Tony counted this vacation as a flop, like all of the others. Give Tony a chance to disconnect from the world, and he would take it. No trip was going to fix his deep-rooted family problems. No excursion was going to make him forget his stress. No beautiful resort was going to make him have fun. 

The worst was that he hadn’t reached out to anyone during any of this. He knew he would be mocked by his so-called “friend group” for complaining about a luxurious winter vacation when the rest of them had been stuck in NYC. “Rich kid problems,” he could almost hear the oh-so-talkative Sam Wilson scoff. He was probably right, but there was no way Tony was going to let Wilson “win,” so a fight would probably ensue for the sole sake of protecting his own ego, but fights in his friend group didn’t last too long. He loved the dumb bastards too much.

Speaking of dumb bastards, he saw one walking through the parking lot after he parked his car.

“Tony!” Bruce Banner stopped in front of Tony’s car. Tony shut the car door and walked next to the curly-haired, bespectacled nerd.

“Morning, Bruce,” Tony croaked, still not used to speaking. He knew his communication skills were going to be less than lacking today, but it was nothing he wasn’t used to. Most people already thought he was a jackass anyways. He would get back into the swing of things soon enough… or that’s what he continually told himself. 

“How was your vacation?”

“It was good.” Tony wasn’t an incredibly good liar, but luckily Bruce wasn’t the best lie detector. Bruce was one of his closest friends, but Tony never stopped being surprised by how scatterbrained he could be sometimes; or, more likely, how stuck in his convoluted mind he was. He was oblivious to many things sitting right in front of him. Like, for example, he was oblivious to another person who suddenly clapped him on the back.

“Bruce! Tony!” an accented voice pierced Tony’s thoughts. A brilliantly white smile pierced his eyes. God, Thor’s smile should be outlawed. In fact, maybe Thor himself shouldn’t be allowed in normal high school and be shipped off to some expensive boarding school for ridiculous beautiful people. Seriously, the kid had the facial features of a god. Tony wasn’t crushing on him: but merely appreciated his beauty in a totally platonic and not gay way, like the majority of his friend group. Note: “majority,” meaning one person _in particular_ of their group was not.

Bruce nearly jumped out of his hoodie and was left clambering for his glasses, which had slipped off of his nose. Tony watched with amusement as Bruce greeted their blonde friend by giving a flustered garble of words and a wave, which looked more like a spasm. Thor just grinned, completely immune to Banner’s awkwardness. Tony couldn’t decide to interpret Thor’s strange reactions to Bruce as oblivion or acceptance. Maybe something else altogether. Regardless, it was entertaining, so he let it continue. 

“I haven’t seen you all in an eternity!” Thor exclaimed. Tony eyed Thor’s hand as it lingered on Bruce’s shoulder. 

“It hasn’t been that long, Thor,” Bruce said, gathering himself.

“Well two days feels like a long time for me!” Thor said, triggering a flush of pink to rush across Bruce’s face. Tony perked up, his “Teasing Bruce Banner” radar picking up on a perfect opportunity. “So you all have been hanging out over break?” 

“I- We- Maybe we- Umm, it’s just-”

“Yeah! We had a lot of sleepovers.”

Jackpot. Tony quirked his eyebrows at Bruce, who was withering.

"Wow. Get much sleep during those sleepovers?”

“No, Bruce kept me up almost all night.”

Tony laughed. This was almost too easy. “You should have invited me. We could have made it a threesome.”

“Bruce, why didn’t we invite Tony? We could have had a threesome!”

Bruce was never going to speak to him again. 

The poor kid looked like he was going to die. Every possible comeback or excuse he crafted wouldn’t make it out of his mouth as he squeaked and stuttered; he was relegated to watching the cursed exchange and giving Tony those “why are you doing this to me” eyes that painted a magnificently sadistic smile on his tormentor’s face.

Tony shot a glance at Thor, whose soft smile caught him off guard. Did he… know what he was doing to Bruce? The thought had never occured to Tony before.

Thankfully, Bruce’s savior appeared.

“Hey guys,” a tired, but level voice said in greeting. All three of the boys looked up.

“Pepper,” Tony said in almost a whisper. He felt himself short of breath as his Pepper-starved eyes scanned her mellow expression.

“How are you all?” Pepper asked through a brilliant smile that reminded Tony just how much he had missed her. She gave Thor and Bruce a hug, then stopped in front of Tony. 

“You haven’t been answering my texts.”

“I was on a mountain.”

“Uh huh.” Pepper wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into an intimate hug that Tony knew he didn’t deserve. He could hear Thor let out an “aww” that Bruce quickly shushed. “We’ll see you guys later,” he called as he pulled Thor away. Bruce, like Pepper, was one of the many people Tony didn’t deserve in his life.

“So, really and honestly, how have you been?”

Pepper was fearsome, for multiple reasons. She could be genuinely scary when she wanted to without even raising her voice. She was always in control. She knew when he was lying. She had eyes that seemed to stare right through him and hit him right in the soul he didn’t believe he had.

“I’ve been… alive.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” Tony looked away as Pepper gave him one of those “go on” stares that he was unsure how to approach. After a few seconds of silence, Pepper spoke again.

“I’m here. Okay? I’ll remind you as many times as you need me to.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

The 5-minute bell rang. Pepper gave a melancholy smile. “I’ll see you in Calc.”

Tony was quiet as she walked away and guilt clouded his mind. Why hadn’t he texted her? Why had he been stupid? Now she was upset with him, probably hiding the majority of it beneath that always-calm, always-in-control demeanor of hers. He brushed it under the rug, as he tended to do with most things that scared him, and focused on the task at hand.

High school. First day back. First period, English. 

“Good morning, dork,” Tony’s second favorite redhead greeted as he sat in the desk behind her. 

“Nat, Rogers,” Tony said, giving both a nod and dropping into his chair. Natasha Romanov and Steve Rogers, being two of his closest oldest friends, immediately picked up on something, whether it be by his inability to quip back with a sarcastic comment or by how unceremoniously he threw his backpack next to his desk. The two turned around to face Tony, slowly and simultaneously, like a creepy pair of twins from a B-list horror movie. The comparison was apt, as creepy twins gave Tony _almost_ as much dread as a curious Steve and Nat did. 

“So what’s wrong?” Steve started and Nat slapped him on the arm. “Ow.”

“Please, I doubt that you felt that, Mr. Quarterback-with-Abundant-Muscle-Mass,” Nat said, chuckling at the frowning Rogers. 

“I’m not a quarterback, I’m a running back and you know that but you’re probably doing that to annoy me.” Nat smiled, but said nothing. “And I don’t understand why you hit me, I didn’t even say anything.” 

“You _did_ say something, which was the problem. You're too forward. Leave the talking to me, Captain.” 

Tony decided if they were going to talk about their strategies to approach him _right in front of him_ , it was probably time to interject. “Hey, if you guys are finished bickering for no apparent reason, I’d like to talk about something worth a damn.”

“Wow. Language.” Nat hit Steve again, this time harder. “ _Oww_.”

“So how was your vacation?” Nat said, ignoring the way the blonde next to her rubbed his arm.

“I’d rather hear about yours,” Tony said, meeting Natasha’s gaze head on. There was something in her eyes that flared at his remark, like she was putting together a puzzle in her mind. Nat, being the observant and detail-obsessed person she was, was constantly analyzing every bit of body language and dialogue, which would be discreet to people who didn’t know her. But after being friends for so long, Tony could pick up on when she was piecing information together and it was always a bad sign for him. Luckily, he spotted a distraction on the right side of the room.

“ **She’s fucking green**.” It could have come out more eloquently than that, but Tony would take almost anything over Nat’s piercing gaze at that moment. What he didn’t realize was how loud he had been and that he would attract the attention of said green girl with that comment. Her head snapped towards the source of the words and met Tony’s gaze with icy eyes. 

The girl was indeed a shade of green and cascading down her back were long brown locks with red streaks in them. She sat in her desk as if she was expecting to be attacked, but slowly shifted so that her body was turned towards the group, like she was getting ready to pounce.

“Tony,” Steve sighed, then faced the green girl. “Sorry, he didn’t mean it in a… mean way. He’s just good at point out random things.”

“Yeah, uhh,” Tony coughed, getting over his initial shock, “I’m not racist. Or… colorist.” He ignored Nat’s whisper of _that’s exactly what racist people say_ and continued. “It looks good on you. It compliments your hair. Uh, your hair compliments your green- your skin.”

The green girl looked confused and still a little angry, but she didn’t kill Tony like he thought she would. 

“Smooth,” Nat said, patting Tony’s arm. “What’s your name?” she called to the girl.

“Gamora,” she said, after some more suspicious staring.

“Where you from?”

“I’m here on the interplanetary exchange program,” Gamora said, expertly dodging the question.

“Welcome to Central Manhattan High, Gamora,” Steve said, ever the high school golden boy. “I’m Steve, this is Nat and Tony. Tony’s really not that great at first impressions, obviously.”

“I can tell.” Gamora didn’t smile, but her voice seemed to soften a bit after eyeing the three of them again. “I’m from Xandar.”

Tony, in the recent years that intergalactic trade had finally been established between Earth and multiple other planets and systems, had researched and read tons of texts regarding different planets and societies, and he knew for sure that Xandarians didn’t have green skin. Still, it was hard for him to tell if she was throwing that out and presuming that Earthians wouldn’t know enough about other species of the universe to debunk it or if she was adopted or something, so he indulged her anyways.

“So what’s the tech like there? They have comm systems? Brain chips? Apple watches?” he reeled, bordering on mindless prattling.

Gamora looked even more confused now, but if she was going to answer she was cut off by the bell. The morning announcements rolled out of the intercom as usual and welcomed students back from winter break, which resulted in a groan from most of the class. Tony, being a complete nerd and thirsty for human interaction, kept quiet.

The rest of class passed normally and uneventfully, with Good Boy Steve Rogers shushing Tony whenever he tried to make a joke to him or Nat. Although he knew the school stress would return, he was a little happy to be lulled back into the structured monotony that was high school life. Plus, there was the added benefit that he went to school with people he actually _liked_. 

Second period, AP Biology. Tony had already asserted himself as robotics/business major for the rest of his life, but he couldn’t help but be interested in biology, as a little side stint of course. The study of creatures and life was incredibly intricate and it never ceased to astound him. It was one of those subjects that Tony could talk about for eternity (although there were quite a few subjects that could make Tony do that, like how he couldn’t wait for the bell to ring so the two girls behind him would hopefully stop talking about how hot T’Challa was).

And AP classes looked great on college applications. Bonus.

“Excuse me?” a voice said from Tony’s left. “This seat taken?”

Tony turned.

And saw the most beautiful boy he had ever laid eyes on. His gray-blue eyes were regarding Tony with a guarded, yet gentle scrutiny that didn’t make Tony uncomfortable in the slightest; in fact, he could stare at him like that for the rest of the class period and it might just make the horridly descriptive conversation behind him worth it. The starstruck teen took a quick, hopefully not too obvious glance over of the unknown person and noticed a few important things. 

His hair was obvious styled in the morning, but was now flopping over a little towards the right side of his head. Cute.

Slight stubble across his chin, but not too much. Also cute.

Shoulders were back, good posture, decent height and decent build. Attractive.

His hands were shaking a little as he put his hand on the back of the chair, just like how Tony’s were at that moment. Realizing this made him aware of how long he had been staring this guy down and he hadn’t even opened his own mouth. He had frozen completely as his heart started to speed up even more.

“Huh?” Tony mumbled, forgetting what the stranger had said in his daze.

The other teen cocked his head. “I said,” he paused a little, still confused, “Is this seat taken? Can I sit here?” he reiterated.

Charlie sat there. But _fuck_ Charlie, Charlie was a dumbass. Tony immediately started shaking his head, unaware that he was answering the second question now instead of the first.

“Oh. Alright,” the other boy said, slightly taken aback.

 _Shit_. Tony watched this unnamed student trek to the other side of the classroom and scout for a seat among the sea of teenagers. 

The bell rang, roll was called, and Charlie wasn’t in attendance. Mr. Handsome shot Tony a look from across the room as class started and the seat next to him was still vacant. Tony cursed his missed opportunity.

But out of the depths of his brain, he was shot by a disgusting thought: he was being disloyal. He was being disloyal to Pepper, the girl who made him the luckiest 18 year old in the country. In that moment, he had thrown Virginia Potts out of his consciousness and into the dumpster, and it was making Tony shudder to his core. This thought haunted him through the rest of class, distracting him from note-taking or time-management. He did happen to catch Mr. Handsome answer a few questions during class, which was surprising considering this was an AP class and he was a (unconfirmed) transfer student. 

The bell rang. Another class over. And he had no notes. Cringing at the thought of asking someone else for theirs, Tony shook it off and decided to just read the textbook that night. He started to pack up, but halted when a figure blocked the fluorescent light from his vision. There he was. Mr. Handsome. 

“If my hands were going to bother you so much, you could have just said so.”

This comment made Tony look down at the stranger’s hands a second time and he noticed the slight tremble in them. His fingers were crooked and curled inward, all of them long and delicate and fragile. Scars coated them, as well as callouses, like a collection of marks all holding their own various stories. They didn’t bother Tony at all.

“No, not your hands, they’re fine,” Tony quickly supplied, hoping that the guy didn’t notice how his voice was rising in pitch.

“I saw you look at them earlier,” the stranger replied (Tony should really just ask his name or something). “Or,” Mr. Handsome’s eyebrows inched up his forehead, as did the corners of his mouth, “were you looking at me so thoroughly for another reason?” 

Damn. He was cocky. _Think of something cockier, Tony_.

Instead, all that came out was “uhhhhhhhhh.”

 _Smooth_ , Nat’s voice chimed in his head again.

Mr. Handsome chuckled. “Quite the charmer, I see.” His eyes were sparkling. “I’m Stephen Strange. Just transferred here, although that’s probably obvious.”

“Yeah. I’m Tony Stark. Welcome to Central Manhattan High School,” Tony said, fishing for something to keep the conversation going. “By the way, if you want to start sitting next to me, that’s totally fine. I hate Charlie anyways.”

“I might take you up on that invitation. Charlie seems pretty terrible.”

“Oh yeah. The worst. Definitely. All Charlies are horrible.” Tony let out an awkward laugh that he wished he could pluck out of the air and swallow again.

“As much as I’d like to keep ragging on the Charlies of the world, we should probably head to class,” Stephen said, starting to walk out of the room with Tony drifting behind him. “Speaking of class, what’s your next one?”

Tony’s heart almost stopped dead in his chest as he realized that Stephen wasn’t simply interacting with him, he was trying to gain information on him, and maybe even _flirting_ with him? Tony couldn’t tell.

“I have Government next. You?”

“Spanish, in room B43. And I have no clue where that is.” Stephen glanced at Tony with eyes that made his poor heart stop again. “Mind helping me out?”

“I- Well, my class is a little far from there.”

“You could tell them that you’re helping a new student.”

Tony would take literally any excuse to go with Stephen, so he nodded a little too quickly. Tony headed towards the stairs with Stephen beside him to travel to Room B43. Tony felt oddly out of place, like a bundle of jittery nerves, as if he was the new student instead of Stephen, who was almost floating up the stairs with a pristine grace and confidence Tony liked to believe he could exude. 

“So you’re into STEM?” Tony asked, trying to use his little knowledge of the stranger to keep another conversation going. 

“Kind of. I want to be a doctor. How did you guess?”

“You knew your stuff. And you’re a transfer. Impressive.” Tony normally wouldn’t compliment just anyone, but his ego had melted off a little. _Just like it does around Pepper_ , his mind added bitterly.

“So you were paying attention to me? I’m flattered.”

“Eh.” _Notes_ , something in the back of Tony’s head chirped, and he wasn’t sure if he was grateful for it or embarrassed by it. “Speaking of class,” Tony started slowly, hoping to sound confident, “do you mind helping me with something?”

“Tony, I don’t know if you remember but I’m new here. You’re supposed to be helping me,” Stephen said, playfully teasing him. Tony was going to need a nurse pretty soon.

“I happened to be a little distracted during class today and didn’t get any notes. Mind helping me out with that?”

“Well, I'm not so sure about that,” Stephen said, giving a little laugh that sounded too sad and unsure to be a laugh.

“What’s wrong?” Tony was backpedaling, trying to figure out what he had said. “You'd just have to give me your number and send me pictures of them.” Decently smooth.

“Well,” Stephen said with a hint of uncertainty rising in his voice as they rounded the corner. Luckily, Stephen’s class was a fair walk from AP Biology, giving Tony plenty of time to absorb as much information as he could. It also gave Tony plenty of time to fuck up, apparently. The other teen was quiet for a little longer before spitting out, “my handwriting isn’t… very legible.” 

Tony was about to joke that he had seen and read the worst handwriting in the state (aka. Bruce Banner’s) and that he shouldn’t be concerned about his own before he noticed how Stephen was oddly quiet. His hands were still shaking a little and he was wringing them together slowly and carefully. 

“If that’s the case,” Tony said almost on autopilot, “then maybe we should meet after school and you can still help me out?” Tony almost broke down right there to congratulate himself on how incredible of a comeback that was.

Stephen immediately beamed, his arms falling down to his side again. “Find me at lunch, I’ll give you my number, and we’ll work it out from there. Thanks, Tony.” Stephen gave a finally smile before vanishing through a doorway and leaving a stunned Tony staring at the plastic plate on the wall. B43. 

Tony hadn’t even realized they were there yet.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be honest, this chapter alone took me more than a week to write, so who knows how long it will take for the next one? But whenever I update I'll at least try to make the chapters decently long!
> 
> My tumblr: @artisan-mushrooms


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